Rooftop Camper: Hard Top Pop-Up Tent for Your Vehicle

It’s a camper’s dream: no stakes, no poles, no creepy-crawlies, no RV-sized price tag. Setting up in seconds and offering a sturdy place to sleep that’s elevated well off the ground, the Hardtop One by iKamper mounts onto a vehicle’s rooftop and boasts a hardtop shell for durability and rain protection. But the best part is, the interior of the tent isn’t limited by the size of your car’s roof. Not only does it feature a slide-out extension floor, but optional extensions that reach down to the ground make its maximum size virtually limitless. That makes it larger than all car-top models currently on the market, with iKamper billing it the world’s first expandable hard-shell roof top tent.

Essentially, the Hardtop One is a pop-up camper that doesn’t require towing. All you need is a standard roof rack. To deploy it, you unbuckle the four binders and allow the articulated gas struts to automatically lift the fiberglass top. Then you unlock the lever to loosen the floor, slide it out and activate two interior stabilizers. The whole process takes under a minute, and packing it away takes only three minutes.

The tent is made of a waterproof and breathable fabric body, fiberglass roof and aluminum honeycomb floor, and comes with an integrated mattress that sleeps up to four people. A second model, the Hardtop Jr., is non-expandable and sleeps up to three. To get in and out of the tent, you hook the included ladder over hooks at the entrance threshold.

Creator Soon Park took inspiration from Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel ‘On the Road’ and his own cross-country journeys, initially designing a tent that he wanted for his own personal use in a process that took nearly two years. The Hardtop One is currently only for sale in his native South Korea, retailing for $3,950, but the company is looking for a U.S. distributor.